Sunday, August 8, 2010

Left click broke on Asus EEEPC 900

Warning: Any breakage due to following this tutorial is sole responsibility of any body using this tutorial. So here is what I did to fix this. Physical fix took about 1 and a 1/2 hours from disassembly to cleaning out switch to VOM check to reassembly to reboot and check. Research took longer.

Then watch some videos. All credit goes to TigerOnEEEPC for making these videos on youtube.

The above videos were invaluable and I used them to follow how to disassemble my Netbook.

After pulling keyboard and upper plastic casing (plus ribbon harnesses for keyboard and mouse) I took apart the switch using this video for reference. Downloaded zip and extracted using Mplayer to watch extracted AVI File. Which was made with Open source tools like Blender. All credit goes to wapko for making this video.

The contact disk was not cracked inside of switch. Cleaned out contacts with 90% denatured alcohol and q-tips and a razor knife (thin one). Reassembled switch. Checked with VOM first before reassembling Netbook.

Checked good with VOM. Reassembled Netbook.
Booted up into Antix 8.5. Left click on Menu in Icewm. Left click now works as it should. I will see how long this fix lasts.

13 comments:

I'd love to know how long the fix lasted, because I sent mine in to Asus for the left button and it broke again within a few months. Then the right button broke soon after. Now my touch pad works, but neither button.

So if they broke again that quickly after being worked on by the manufacturer, I wonder if they did something other than this. But, if so, why? I just don't want to be spending an hour and a half every few months fixing this problem.

...or do what I did for my beloved EeePC 1000HE ;) replace the whole motherboard.

That had the bonus for me of fixing the audio port my cat mangled (he had assistance from a pair of headphones) and giving me spare parts to scavenge should something go smashy smashy on the new board (this is handy, actually -- USB ports do physically wear out...)

Just sayin'.

Also -- roky, your robot protection is not perfect, I see two machine comments as it is.